Today in 1969, Johnny Cash taped “Hello…I’m Johnny Cash,” the first of his ABC-TV weekly shows at the Ryman Auditorium, kicking off with “Folsom Prison Blues.” The show, which featured guests Glen Campbell, Jeannie C. Riley and Joe Tex, becomes the fifth episode aired.

On this day in 1963, five weeks after Patsy Cline was killed in a plane crash, her song “Sweet Dreams (Of You)” was released.

“Sweet Dreams (of You)” is a country ballad, which was written by Don Gibson. Gibson originally recorded the song in 1955; his version hit the top ten of Billboard’s country chart, but was eclipsed by the success of a competing version by Faron Young. In 1960, after Gibson had established himself as a country music superstar, he released a new version as a single. This version also charted in the top ten on the country chart and also crossed over to the Billboard Hot 100, where it peaked at number ninety-three. The song has become a country standard, with other notable versions by Patsy Cline and Emmylou Harris.

In the summer of 1956 Faron Young recorded “Sweet Dreams” and took it all the way to #2 on the country charts. It was this version that garnered Gibson his first recognition as a talented songwriter.

In early 1963, Patsy Cline was recording songs for her next album, Faded Love, which was set for release in late March, 1963. She recorded “Sweet Dreams” for the album on February 5. However, on March 5, Cline died in a plane crash on the way home from a benefit in Kansas City, Missouri for the family of Cactus Jack Call, a disc jockey who was killed in an automobile accident so, therefore, the album was never released. The songs were later compiled for the release Patsy Cline the Last Sessions in 1988.

Instead, Decca Records issued a double album, entitled The Patsy Cline Story, in the summer of 1963.

In 1963, “Sweet Dreams” was released to the public and became a big crossover hit, making it to #5 on the country charts and to #44 on the pop music charts. It also peaked on the U.S. Adult Contemporary charts at #15. This song was followed by two other songs that were planned for release on Cline’s upcoming album: “Leavin’ on Your Mind” and “Faded Love”, which both became hits.

It was said that Cline did not like the use of the violins that producer Owen Bradley was bringing into the song because she feared she was becoming too “pop” for her country audience. But upon hearing the song after the playbacks the night she recorded it, she supposedly held a record up of her first record and “Sweet Dreams” and proclaimed “Well, here it is: The first and the last.” This quote came from the video called Remembering Patsy, and was quoted by Jan Howard whose husband at the time was Harlan Howard.

In 1985, the song became the title tune of a Patsy Cline biopic starring Jessica Lange as Cline. Cline’s hit version of “Sweet Dreams” was included on the film’s soundtrack, along with “Crazy,” “She’s Got You,” and many of her other songs. The song also featured in Martin Scorsese’s 2006 movie The Departed, Asif Kapadia’s 2006 movie The Return, and The Coen Brothers’ film Blood Simple.

Source: Wikipedia

Today in 1932, Loretta Lynn was born in Butcher Holly, Kentucky. She was the first woman to win the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year award in 1972 and landed in the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1988.

Today in 1959, George Jones’ “White Lightning” picked up his first #1 country single in Billboard magazine as a recording artist.

Written by rockabilly artist J. P. Richardson, best known by his stage name, the Big Bopper,  it was recorded by George Jones and released as a single in February 1959. On April 13, 1959, Jones’ version was the first number-one single of his career. The song has since been covered by numerous artists.

In his 1997 autobiography, I Lived To Tell It All, Jones recalls arriving for the recording session under the influence of a great deal of alcohol and the track took approximately 80 takes. Although Jones was already notorious for his drinking habits, this scenario was perhaps more understandable since his lifelong friend, the Big Bopper – whose composition he was recording – had been killed during the preceding week on “the day the music died”. To compound matters, Buddy Killen, who played the upright bass on the recording, was reported as having severely blistered fingers from having to play his bass part 80 times. As a result, Killen not only threatened to quit the session, but also threatened to physically harm Jones for the painful consequences of Jones’ drinking. Ultimately, producer Pappy Daily opted to use the first take of the song, even though Jones flubs the word “slug” (Jones would intentionally mimic this mistake in live performances and subsequent re-recordings of the song). Former Starday president Don Pierce later explained to Jones’ biographer Bob Allen, “We tried doing the song again, but it never was as good as it was that first time. So we just released it that way.”

“White Lightning” became Jones’ first number-one country hit – with a more convincing rock and roll sound than the half-hearted rockabilly cuts he had previously recorded. In the liner notes to the 1994 compilation Cup of Loneliness: The Classic Mercury Years, country music historian Colin Escott writes, “Ironically, it became the pop hit Mercury had been hoping for all long…George hee-hawed it up in a giddy, bilbous frenzy.” The song gave Jones, a notorious critic of pop-country crossovers in his later years, the best showing he would ever achieve on the pop chart as well, peaking at No. 73.

Today in 1989, after winning countless awards, racking up over 20 #1 hits and selling 50 million records worldwide, Alabama was named “80’s Artist of the Decade” by the Academy of Country Music. Kathy Mattea won Single Record of the Year and Song of the Year for “Eighteen Wheels And A Dozen Roses.”